They lay together through the mist of countless centuries, while the Earth, the galaxy, the infinities of the universe shifted and resettled and changed again. When they awoke it was to an existence tranquil yet hideous, where human emotions had no place. Their love-making was viewed with suspicion and disgust. Now they were the outsiders, the throwbacks. Yet, with all their human imperfections, they were the only hope for a dying civilization.

The Great Brain Robbery by James P. Fisher
Unibook, 1974
Price I paid: 50¢

Dennis Sands was just another college junior. Then, he learned that he had strange psychic powers valuable and needed on another planet. He agreed to travel to Ikonia, even though he didn’t trust Cynnax, disguised as a professor, who revealed his true identity as a being from another world in a distant solar system, a world that was on the brink of extinction. When Dennis got there, he realized why his psychic powers were treasured. And that the evil Cynnax and his perverted band planned to rob him of his brain.

Capt. Alex and his team had been computer-selected to explore the sun-twin planet Cygni C. They found there a race of men who wiled away their lives playing childish games, making love, and vegetating in the deep, luxuriant jungles. Alex’s friends quickly succumbed to the planet’s many delights. Only he felt duty-bound to return to earth.

Klim Xaraf, son of a nomadic chief, awoke from his monumental fall to find himself the prisoner of time―trapped a thousand million years in the future.

Around him was a dying world, its incredible power sucked by necromancers through a hole to the past…it’s cities preserved in stasis, awaiting his liberation, or their final doom.

Yet Klim could neither meet his world’s challenge, nor conquer the wizards of his own, until The Powers primed him for the battle. For with their knowledge, they would erase his memory and plunge him into a nightmare training ground…where all the wonders of tomorrow were the forgotten souvenirs of an ancient yesterday.

The Müller-Fokker Effect by John Sladek
Pocket Books, 1973
(Originally published by Hutchinson, 1970)
Price I paid: 90¢

Can a human being be reconstituted like orange juice?

To find out, the Army backs a futuristic research project that transfers a man’s personality onto computer tapes. Guinea pig for the experiment is technical writer and dreamer Bob Shairp.

But the project barely gets off the ground when a computer accident wipes out Shairp’s mortal body and only his tapes remain. Is Shairp doomed to this encoded state forever? Or can the bizarre process be reversed?

The Cruachan and The Killane by Cristabel
Curtis Books, 1970
Price I paid: 75¢

Nora Castonay is a breathtaking blonde endowed with a miraculous psychical gift of healing the sick. She also has an uncanny gift for getting into all kinds of trouble.

First, aboard a doomed aircraft a dying courier entrusts her with secret information to deliver a mysterious man named Vanor. Next, rescued after the explosion of the plane by a ship, The Cruachan, she falls in love with its enigmatic captain, Killane.

Then, as she finally nears the mystic island of Veltakin, she comes face to face with the ultimate, universal terror—

Magellan is the last city-state on earth—a society where perfection is being rapidly approached. It is the Eve of Eternity—the day when the great computer complex Chronophage will assume dominion over the earth and grant every man his wish.

Euripides Che Fourthojuly 1070121, who has been avoiding the tranquilizing drugs all are required to take, will be in for a very bad time indeed….